Bison Monologues
by Webdog177
Summary: A short, one-shot told from the perspective of the sky bison. Their thoughts on life, love, and the world.


Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I make no money from this. If any of the actual owners of Avatar: The Last Airbender request it, I will remove this from the web. This is how I just pass the time until I am forced into the depths of sleep at my computer.

A/N: This is something I thought up after re-reading Hitchhikers Guide. The bit with the sperm whale and the bowl of petunias is extraordinarily funny to me. After watching the Avatar series, I got to thinking about how the Sky Bisons felt and thought. I figured I would make it a comedy 'cuz, why not?

Bison Monologues

By Webdog177

Out of all the strange things in the great big world, some of the oddest are those that are thought of as completely different than what they actually are. Take the rabbit squirrel, for example. Quite small, unable to speak the common language the even odder beings that walk on two feet, and spend most of their time gnawing on various nuts. One would walk by the small creature and think, my… what a small, charming creature! I wonder if I feed him a snack, he will come and let me pet him? Maybe I could even take it home, if my parents let me!

Little does one realize that the same small, charming rabbit squirrel that one wants to befriend is actually, at the same time, thinking along those same exact lines.

Wow! What an amazing creature! Walking on two feet; how bizarre! If I did that, surely I would topple over! Wait, what is it doing? Is that food? Can I eat it? If I allow this odd creature to feed me, maybe I can trick it into petting me! If it is also stupid enough, maybe it can take me home and I can soil its furniture!

See? Completely different. Who would want something that devious? No one, that's who.

This world has many different odd creatures. Not the least being the aforementioned animal that walks on two feet and wants to take rabbit squirrels home with them. Some of the most bizarre, however, are those that those same two-legged creatures have the audacity to keep as pets. Polar bear dogs, sparrow parrots, and mules. Mules… how odd. Who ever thought up mules? For what purpose in this great adventure of life would mules ever be needed for? The world may never know.

Dragons were some of the most strange creatures to ever come about.

Dragons!

If snakes weren't bad enough, just slap some wings on them, make them the size of a house, give them a mouthful of sharp teeth instead of two, and... sure, why not? Make them breathe fire.

Thank you, creator. Much obliged.

But, we aren't talking about those wretched things. No.

We are talking about an even stranger species. If any other animal in the world, be it those damnable rabbit squirrels or those weird two-legged creatures, saw them, their first reaction would be disbelief, and in some cases, insanity. Even dragons, when they occasionally fly by each other, do a double-take when they see us.

We are talking, of course, about those lovely, lovely sky bison.

Yes, that's right. Bison that fly. If one thought that flying, fire-spitting, house-sized snakes were bad enough, then surely equal-sized bison that fly are just as bad?

Not so.

We sky bisons are quite amiable, actually. We are very content to spend our days lying in the sun, sleeping, eating… just about doing anything, really, that doesn't require must intense thought. Similar to many creatures, we imagine. We go about our business from day to day, never really changing our habits. We wake up, we eat, we doze, we wake up again, we eat again, we have a little chat (most of which consists of moans, groans, and roars), then we go back to sleep.

The fact that we can fly is somewhat of a formality. We don't really know how that particular talent came about. I have a friend that swears it was all started by a bison that had quite enough of life, tried to jump off a cliff in order to end it all, but failed miserably. His friends and family saw him fly and thought that perhaps they would also give it a try.

That same bison, my friend says, actually died from the shock of floating in the air; effectively succeeding in his original plan to end his life.

But I digress.

We have the ability to fly, that much is a fact. Not many of us really care about it though. We cannot easily sleep while flying, after all. I have another friend that can do it. No one knows how he can, though. It's really odd. One time he fell asleep while flying and woke up in the North Pole.

He came back with a head cold. What an idiot.

Not only that, there is no food in the sky. So why would we even want to fly? We don't, if you really want to know.

But, those same two-legged creatures that like to befriend, take home, and later have their beds soiled by rabbit squirrels find our ability to fly quite interesting. These creatures, we think they are called Hew-mans, actually think we were the first creatures to… ah… what do they say? Bend air? Odd, that.

Their observations didn't really bother us at first. They just watched us eat, sleep, and roar occasionally. They started following us around, eating what we eat (which was mainly plants and grain, mind), and doing what we do.

We didn't really mind that, actually. It was extremely cute to watch a small Hew-man sit and eat beside me. It was almost like having a pet! I named him Liam.

Anyway.

But soon, things started to get weird. One day Liam climbed on my back, and sat on the top of my head. I didn't quite know how to interpret that. Was it some sort of Hew-man gesture of love to one's master? Was it some sort of desire to mate? I sincerely hoped not, because I was not ready for such a relationship with him. Other Hew-mans follow Liam's lead and soon, many of the Hew-mans regularly took us for rides.

It was embarrassing and humiliating. If we could, many of us wished we could jump off a cliff.

I don't know whose idea it was at first, but someone, after his Hew-man pet climbed on his back, decided then to go for a fly. He had wanted, as many of us wanted to do, to throw off his hew-man in the air. Unfortunately, it didn't have the effect he had wanted. The other Hew-mans seemed to like flying, and cajoled the rest of us to fly with them as well.

Oh well. It wasn't as embarrassing if everyone did it. We chose to indulge our audacious pets. But that would be the last time. It wasn't as if it would get any worse.

Oh, were we ever wrong.

Soon we started to see our Hew-mans with the very same marks on their heads that we had. I didn't believe my friend when he first told me. I thought he had mistaken a grunt for a groan, and asked him to repeat himself. Sure enough, he said that his Hew-man had scribbled a bright blue arrow on his forehead.

I couldn't help it. I had to see it for myself. His Hew-man actually had put the mark on his own head, effectively mimicking us. And it wasn't just him! Many of the Hew-mans had copied the marks. Not just on their foreheads, either. Their limbs and body, too.

We never had the heart to tell them that those marks were for telling the different between males and females. The differences are subtle, but it's how we can tell. I nearly died when Liam became Lisa to me.

Anyway.

So the Hew-mans find us interesting enough to copy us, take us for rides, and mix up their own genders.

Wonderful. At least it's better than those cursed rabbit squirrels.

What can we do about it, anyway? Nothing. There is much more of them than there are of us. So we don't complain. They feed us, they clean us, they have (although small) houses for us nice and close to our friends and families. They even pick up our droppings; definitely my favorite. It's like having pets that take care of _us_! Sure they climb on top of us and take us for rides… and it is quite humiliating when it does happen…

But we are fine, as long as we get to laugh at our friends when they are chosen to be ridden instead of us.

And one cannot help but think:

If given the choice between a house-sized flying snake that breathes fire, and a flying bison… isn't the choice obvious?

A/N: I had a fun time writing this.

Peace!


End file.
